Roadnet/Vaasan

Roadnet Finland Oy is a full subsidiary of Hämeen Kuljetus Oy and a major Finnish provider of logistics services for industrial and commercial companies. Hämeen Kuljetus Oy is one of Finland’s biggest rock material sellers and transportation companies.

On behalf of Vaasan bakery, Roadnet Finland has opened a 3PL operation in Tampere, where Vaasan is delivering fresh product in bulk from a number of their bakeries. In the terminal, orders for regional stores are picked and then delivered in time before shops open. This process fits in Vaasan’s network redesign which has been a focus for 2017 and which includes outsourcing operations in specific locations.

The cooperation between Vaasan, a leading Finnish bakery company, and Pcdata already dates back to 2004, when a national rollout of the Distrib Pick to Light solution was conducted to 14 bakeries. These systems have been up and running ever since.

The company has built-on previous experience by Vaasan through their terminal-operation in Jyväskylä, where a Distrib Put to Light system was installed earlier this year. Company representatives visited the site in Jyväskylä and very quickly were ascertained that this same process would suit their operation perfectly. In the terminal in Tampere, there are several deliveries of product during the late afternoon and evening.

Orders are broken down to more than 200 store orders, using overhead installed LED-displays for each individual store. The process is controlled by Pcdata’s industrial, touch-screen workstations that are configured as so-called Pre- and End-dispatchers; Pre-dispatch stations receive product inbound, validate and verify actual quantities received and then pre-dispatch the required quantities to a number of End-dispatch sections. These End-dispatch sections are built in such a way, that workload can be evenly divided between a number of employees, without interfering with each other. The system keeps track of Inventory and Dispatch status and pro-actively informs operators on progress with the use of the Distrib Performance Dashboard tool; a large TV-screen in the warehouse keeps operators informed about their own and their team’s actual performance.

In order to optimise floor space utilization, special rack-locations have been designed, where small customer orders are assigned to multi-level racks or benches. Due to this set-up, less floor space is occupied by small customer orders, and walking distances for operators are reduced since these orders are grouped together on a small area.

The system has been installed in cooperation between Roadnet Finland, Vaasan and Pcdata employees and has been up-and-running since. After a couple of days of getting familiar with the system, operators are now consistently meeting the performance targets set.

Mr. Esa Ojala, Transport Manager for Roadnet Finland Oy commented; ‘’I think everything went well during the project (…). In my opinion we have had a good start for the contract period with Vaasan.’’